NYC BigApps Competition – $20k In Prize Money

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It’s exciting times for data heads. The launch of Data.gov back in May got things jump started; San Francisco recently announced DataSF; and now New York is getting in on the party with the announcement of their own Data Mine (live at 1pm EST today) and the NYC Big Apps competition.

Here’s the idea. NYC releases 170 datasets. Whoever can best make use of the data will win part of the $20,000 in prize money. The individual or startup with the best Web or mobile application gets an invite to a dinner with NYC mayor, MIchael R. Bloomberg.

Some of the data in the list of 170 sets include:

Restaurant inspection results

Extensive property data

Citywide events

Directories of recreation facilities and businesses

City budget data

Traffic updates

Alternate side parking updates

Not too shabby, right? And that’s just a small subset.

No doubt this is going to be an interesting competition. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be keeping an eye on NYC Big Apps from December to January. If the competition is a hit, other big cities will follow.

At the very least, we’re going to see some cool stuff coming out of The New York Times graphics department :).

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They are on the cusp of doing something similar here in the UK. Only a few months ago in a seminar I went to some people from the “government” offered out a dataset of traffic volume, although they didn’t know any details of the dataset.

Really interesting this is happening in the US, the UK will follow… Exciting times.